The Benefits of Self-Help for Your Mind, Body and Spirit

How Self-Help Boosts the Health of Your Mind, Body, and Spirit

Do you remember Stuart Smalley from Saturday Night Live? He was a character that took the idea of self-help and made fun of it. Stuart would look in the mirror and tell himself he was special and smart and do other daily affirmations. A famous quote that he said is, “…Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggonit, people like me!” The most interesting thing about this skit is that even though they sought to make fun of the entire self-help movement, there was truth in what they did. The more you talk to yourself in a positive way, the more positive your life will become and the more successful you will become. It’s just a fact that positive people are often more successful than negative people. The reason is that positive people believe they deserve to be successful.

No One Knows You Better Than Yourself - Also, no one is more judgmental to you than yourself. It’s sad that the one person you can truly count on, turns on you and treats you worse than you would allow any other individual to treat you, isn’t it? But you can turn this around by taking hold of the idea of self-help and realizing that it’s not just a comedy skit. It’s real, and it can affect your entire being: mind, body and spirit.

Believe in Self-Help - People who are interested in self-help are generally open-minded people who believe that they have some measure of control over what happens to them. That means that people who get help from self-help already believe that it is possible. They are willing to give the suggestions they learn a try, and due to that fact alone usually see success in their efforts.

Self-Help Can Build Self-Confidence - When you feel confident in yourself, positive things begin to happen to your mind. If you previously thought you could not do something and due to reading a self-help book you went outside of your comfort zone and experienced success, it is likely that the self-confidence you developed will wash over into trying more new things. It can be like a snowball effect that more confidence builds more confidence.

Self-Help Can Reduce Anxiety - When you realize that you’re not helpless against your emotions and feelings, you will start to notice a big change. When you manage to overcome some of your social anxiety due to taking some of the actions you’ve read about in self-help books, then each step you take out of anxiety will get easier. This isn’t to say that you will never need medication for social anxiety, but you might realize from self-help that it’s okay to take medication if you need it.

Self-Help Can Be the Catalyst for Getting Healthy - Very few people are able to change their body through diet and exercise, because they don’t think that they can or they haven’t figured out a plan of action to do it. By reading self-help books and finding stories of others who have accomplished it, you start to realize it is possible and that you can do it too. Even if you only reach half your goal, you will still end up healthier than before self-help.

Self-Help Makes It Normal to Be Spiritual - Today it can be hard to be spiritual due to how busy everyone is and how it feels like a dog-eat-dog world which is full of anything but love. But when you read self-help books and try to practice self-love and acceptance, you start realizing how much you need the spiritual food that love gives you. When you make it a priority, your life will become better.

While many people treat self-help like a joke, it is actually very effective in helping a lot of people make their lives better. People do not come away from a study of self-help in any area of life unchanged. Taking the time to learn is always going to be a good thing.